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Dr. Raghu Mirmira is an Associate Professor of Internal Medicine and serves as Associate Director of the Diabetes and Hormone Center of Excellence at the University of Virginia. He has a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and M.D. degree from the University of Chicago. He received the Thomas R. Lee Career Development Award from the American Diabetes Association to investigate how insulin-­producing cells form. Dr. Mirmira also sits on major review committees for the National Institutes of Health, American Diabetes Association and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. The Mirmira laboratory is interested in understanding the molecular mechanisms that are relevant to the formation of islet cells within the pancreas. The primary focus of the lab is to study transcription factors (TFs), which can be thought of as "master switches" that regulate the rate of transcription of a variety of genes that are involved in developmental processes. In the long term, the laboratory is involved in looking at ways to cure diabetes by converting potential precursor cells into insulin-producing beta [islet] cells by "genetic reprogramming."